Tackling Wicked Problems: Suicide in the US Military
Abstract
Every 24 hours a member of the United States (US) Armed Forces commits suicide, while every hour a US veteran takes his own life. These statistics illuminate a deeply-rooted social crisis which eludes experts and military leaders to this day. Billions of dollars invested in suicide prevention seem to offer little relief for active duty servicemen and veterans alike. Military suicide is framed as a wicked problem and the new and exciting theory of Chronic Emotional Atrophy (CEA) is proposed to help explain causes of suicidal ideation in the military. A holistic crisis management strategy via information systems is presented in this work. Depressive symptoms exhibited by military members in emotionally suppressed environments closely parallel those phenomena exhibited by medical patients suffering from frontal lobe damage. The prospective psychiatric information system solution provides frontal lobe stimulation (FLS) to mitigate CEA and suicidal ideation.
Description
Proceedings of the 10th International ISCRAM Conference – Baden-Baden, Germany, May 2013, T. Comes, F. Fiedrich, S. Fortier, J. Geldermann and T. Müller, eds.
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.Collections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Time-varying associations of suicide with deployments, mental health conditions, and stressful life events among current and former US military personnel
Shen, Yu-Chu; Cunha, Jesse M.; Williams, Thomas V. (2016);Background U.S. military suicides have increased significantly over the past decade and currently account for almost 20% of all military deaths. We investigated the associations of a comprehensive set of time-varying risk ... -
A Human Systems Integration analysis of the Army suicide prevention program
Bell, Bridgette R. (Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School, 2013-06);A Human Systems Integration (HSI) analysis of the Army Suicide Prevention Program (ASPP) was conducted to gain feedback from soldiers and leaders. The scope of this study limited analysis to the prevention activities ... -
SUICIDE IN LAW ENFORCEMENT: PROTECTING THOSE WHO SERVE
Bernier, Raymond J. (Monterey, CA; Naval Postgraduate School, 2018-09);The goal of this thesis was to identify effective suicide prevention protocols currently being used by law enforcement that can help leadership meet their organizations’ needs. The research also reviewed suicide prevention ...